History

More than 2,600 years ago, an Egyptian craftsperson created a replacement big toe for someone who had lost their own. Made from wood and leather, the prosthetic was carefully shaped to resemble a real toe. Holes and straps allowed it to be secured to the foot, while visible signs of wear suggest that it was actually used during the person’s lifetime. Researchers have tested replicas of ancient Egyptian prosthetic toes and found that they could make walking in traditional sandals more comfortable. This means the object was probably not created merely to complete a body for burial—it had a practical purpose in everyday life. Ancient history is often told through pyramids, pharaohs and golden treasures. Yet this small wooden toe feels more meaningful to me than many royal objects. Someone noticed another person’s daily struggle and used the knowledge and materials available to make life a little easier. We may never know the craftsperson’s name, but their quiet act of care survived for thousands of years. Sometimes the most human part of history is not a grand monument—it is a simple solution made for one person. Visual: AI-generated historical reconstruction inspired by surviving ancient Egyptian prosthetic toes. Authentic source: The British Museum

— HerodotusWave (@HerodotusWave) October 1, 2026

 

This is the strangers’ case

From the Folger Shakespeare Library.  

Sir Thomas More is a collaboratively written play that survives only in a single manuscript. The play is thought to have been written primarily by Anthony Munday, perhaps, some scholars think, aided by Henry Chettle, in the 1590s, with somewhat later contributions from Thomas Dekker, perhaps from William Shakespeare, and just possibly from Thomas Heywood. Politically controversial passages have been censored by Edmund Tilney, a government official known as the Master of the Revels. 

[snip]

On the basis of poetic style, many scholars believe that a three-page revision to the play is in Shakespeare’s handwriting. 

[snip]

The riot that the play references took place on May 1, 1517 and is referred to as Evil May Day. Thomas More, the then under-sheriff of London, was sent to calm the rioters and persuade them to go home. According to the chronicler Edward Hall (c. 1498–1547), a fortnight before the riot an inflammatory xenophobic speech was made on Easter Tuesday by a preacher known as “Dr. Bell” at St. Paul’s Cross at the instigation of John Lincoln, a broker. Bell accused immigrants of stealing jobs from English workers and of “eat[ing] the bread from poor fatherless children.” 

From Act II, Scene 4 of Sir Thomas More:

You’ll put down strangers,

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise

Hath chid down all the majesty of England;

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,

Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silent by your brawl,

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;

What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quelled; and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an agèd man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another…

Say now the king,

As he is clement if th’offender mourn,

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whither would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,

Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,

But chartered unto them, what would you think

To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;

And this your mountainish inhumanity.

As a descendant of Huguenots and Flemish "strangers", an interesting footnote.  

An Insight

People imagine national population declines as there being fewer people around, but that's not what happens. What happens is that towns like Yubari City become ghost towns, while your megapolis, Tokyo, continues to grow. https://t.co/vDNx4AvlZ3

— molson 🧠⚙️ (@Molson_Hart) October 1, 2026

 

I see wonderful things

Je ne sais pas si vous mesurez ce qui est en train de se passer. Alex Karp, le patron de Palantir, ne va plus chercher ses talents à Harvard. Il les forme lui-même. Des jeunes de 18 ans, sans diplôme, choisis sur leur seul talent, qui codent sur de vrais projets et lisent de la philosophie politique entre deux sprints. Il appelle ça « le diplôme Palantir ». Et aujourd'hui le New York Post titre que les boîtes tech lancent leurs propres programmes parce qu'elles ne peuvent plus compter sur l'Ivy League. Ce n'est pas une anecdote RH. C'est un basculement de civilisation. Pendant des décennies, les entrepreneurs ont confié à l'université la mission la plus sacrée qui soit : former les esprits. Ils comprennent aujourd'hui que cette mission a été trahie. Les institutions censées produire des penseurs libres produisent des conformistes. Le mérite a été remplacé par des critères opaques. L'enseignement est devenu catéchisme. Paul Graham l'avait vu avant tout le monde. Alors ils font ce que font les bâtisseurs quand un système les trahit. Ils ne le réforment pas. Ils en construisent un autre, à côté. Elon n'a pas attendu que la NASA se réveille, il a fait SpaceX. Il n'a pas réformé les médias, il a racheté la place publique. Les entrepreneurs ne cherchent plus à convaincre l'État. Ils font l'État, partout où l'État a abdiqué. Relisez La Grève d'Ayn Rand. Nous y sommes. Les bureaucrates gardent les titres, les budgets, les bâtiments. Mais ils perdent la seule chose qui compte : la confiance. Aux États-Unis, à peine 28 % des gens font encore confiance aux médias. Un plus bas historique. Plus personne ne croit ceux qui prétendent nous dire quoi penser. On entend partout que l'école est finie. Je pense exactement l'inverse. Ce n'est pas l'école qui est morte. Ce sont les institutions qui l'ont confisquée. L'école, la vraie, celle de l'Académie d'Athènes, des ateliers de la Renaissance, du maître et de l'apprenti, va renaître. Plus exigeante. Plus juste. Sans dette, sans dogme, sans diplôme comme rente à vie. Une école qui ne fabriquera plus des diplômés, mais des polymathes. Des esprits libres, capables de coder, de penser, de construire et de douter. Ce sont eux qui créeront la valeur des cinquante prochaines années. J'ai appris à coder seul à 12 ans. Aucun amphi ne m'a appris ce que j'ai appris en construisant. Je sais ce que devient un talent quand on le laisse respirer. L'université a eu des siècles pour former les meilleurs esprits. Les entrepreneurs vont le faire en une décennie. La grande reconstruction a commencé.

— Brivael Le Pogam (@brivael) October 1, 2026

 Translation:

I don’t know if you realize what’s happening.

Alex Karp, the head of Palantir, is no longer recruiting his talent from Harvard. He’s training them himself. Young people of 18, without degrees, selected solely on their talent, who code on real projects and read political philosophy between two sprints. He calls it “the Palantir degree.” And today the New York Post headlines that tech companies are launching their own programs because they can no longer rely on the Ivy League.

This isn’t an HR anecdote. It’s a civilizational shift.

For decades, entrepreneurs entrusted universities with the most sacred mission there is: to shape minds. They now understand that this mission has been betrayed. The institutions meant to produce free thinkers are churning out conformists. Merit has been replaced by opaque criteria. Teaching has turned into catechism. Paul Graham saw it before anyone else.

So they’re doing what builders do when a system betrays them. They don’t reform it. They build another one, right alongside.

Elon didn’t wait for NASA to wake up; he created SpaceX. He didn’t reform the media; he bought the public square. Entrepreneurs no longer seek to convince the state. They become the state, wherever the state has abdicated.

Reread Ayn Rand’s *Atlas Shrugged*. We’re there. The bureaucrats keep the titles, the budgets, the buildings. But they’re losing the only thing that matters: trust. In the United States, barely 28% of people still trust the media. A historic low. No one believes those who claim to tell us what to think anymore.

Everywhere you hear that school is over. I think exactly the opposite.

It’s not school that’s dead. It’s the institutions that hijacked it. School, the real one—that of the Athenian Academy, the Renaissance workshops, the master and apprentice—is going to be reborn. More demanding. More just. Without debt, without dogma, without a degree as a lifelong annuity.

A school that will no longer produce graduates, but polymaths. Free minds, capable of coding, thinking, building, and doubting. They’re the ones who will create the value of the next fifty years.

I taught myself to code at 12. No lecture hall taught me what I learned by building. I know what happens to talent when you let it breathe.

The university had centuries to shape the best minds. Entrepreneurs will do it in a decade.

The great rebuilding has begun.

Offbeat Humor

https://t.co/8MHpuESCB5

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 1, 2026

 

Data Talks

30 seconds. You aren't shocked enough. This is the data from the FlyDubai flight yesterday. According to a report the plane was 30 seconds from impact. If anyone had doubts at what an absolute miracle it was that the passengers overtook the controls & saved the flight, I don't think you can doubt it anymore.

— Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll (@skjask) October 1, 2026

 

Morning Song by John McCartin

Morning Song by John McCartin (Australia, 1954 - )

Click to enlarge.

History

My latest article is about how a rogue Wikipedia editor confabulated and misattributed thousands of inventions and concepts to Muslims This trolling made its way into blogs, articles, books, and TV programs. You might even believe some of his lies! Link: https://t.co/4wYDCYPMm3 https://t.co/yFOIaXqrSs

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) October 1, 2026

 

An Insight

After the first Falcon 1 rocket exploded 33 seconds after launch in March 2006, Elon Musk did something that his employees did not expect. He personally called the family members of the engineers who had worked on the rocket. Not the engineers. Their families. The engineers were at the launch site. They had watched their work explode in the sky. They were processing the failure in real time with their colleagues. They had each other. Their families were at home. Their spouses and parents had watched on a livestream or heard the news secondhand. They had no colleagues. They had no context. They just knew that the thing their husband or wife or child had spent 3 years building had just been destroyed in 33 seconds and they didn't know if anyone was hurt. Elon called to tell them everyone was safe. That the failure was a known risk. That the team would try again. That their family member had done extraordinary work and the explosion was not a reflection of their ability. One engineer's wife said the call lasted 4 minutes. She said Elon sounded tired but calm. She said he didn't minimize the failure or exaggerate the optimism. He stated the facts and said "your husband is brilliant and we are going to fly again." The engineers learned about the calls later. Several described it as the moment they decided to stay at SpaceX. Not because the CEO called their families. Because the CEO understood that the family at home absorbs the weight of the failure without any of the camaraderie that makes it bearable for the team. The rockets get the headlines. The families hold the weight in the dark. He called the families.

— Race 🕊️ (@multiplanet1) September 30, 2026

 

I see wonderful things

One important detail from yesterday’s story I’m not sure I mentioned: After the captain was stabbed by the Omani co pilot, 4 passengers subdued the attacker using headphone cords and other means. Yaniv Hayun then realized there was nobody flying the plane and that the aircraft was in a steep dive. He rushed into the cockpit, got into the pilot’s seat and grabbed the controls. Hayun grabbed the control yoke, pulled back and helped level the aircraft while other passengers helped the captain and others were holding down the Jihadist co pilot attacker. When Yaniv was asked how did he know what to do? Yaniv said he knew what to do because he had seen it on TV. He regularly watches “Mayday: Air Crash Investigation,” a documentary series about aviation disasters. Another FLYDUBAI pilot who by chance happened to be traveling aboard then entered the cockpit, took control and ultimately helped land the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia.

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) October 1, 2026